Grid Electric Energy Storage
With increasing amount of renewable electrical energy included in the grid, the need for storing occasional surpluses of the produced electricity increases. The electrical energy is being stored when its production exceeds consumption and released when the consumption exceeds the production. In systems, where options for balancing of the grid power or the storage of surplus electrical energy are absent, the surpluses are curtailed. World-wide, several thousand TWh of electric energy is curtailed annually.
       We are developing an innovative technology for surplus grid energy storage in solid matter with a high energy efficiency and very high volume energy density. A goal is to lower the amount of curtailed electricity and to enable higher amount of the renewable sources to be included in the electrical grid. This would make the energy production efficiency higher and less fossil or nuclear fuels used. The development of the smart city concept is based on renewable energy sources that will become much more energy efficient with this new storage technology due to lower amount of curtailed energy. At the same time, smarter and more flexible management of the electricity production and consumption will be enabled, which will further increase the share of utilized electricity.

Topological Insulators
One of the fascinating aspects of the recently discovered topological insulators (TI) - materials that are bulk insulators but have conducting surface states (topological surface states, TSS) - is robustness of the surface states against perturbations. At the surface of semiconductor, due to saturation of dangling bonds and atomic reconstruction, surface states exist and have energy in the band gap. These surface states are easily modified/destroyed by the presence of defects and adsorbates atoms while TSS are not. The robustness of TSS is due to a property called topological invariant, which can not change as long as the bulk of the material remains insulating. TSSs exist independently of local chemical bonding structures.

Biogenic production of hydrogen
the objectiveis development of new green technologies for metallization of polymeric surfaces and for remediation of metal polluted wastewaters by reductive potential of algae.
Metallization by algae does not require expensive industrial facilities, which are adapted to conventional vacuum loading. Additionally it completely removes the use of toxic and aggressive chemicals that have a big influence on the environment. Another advantage is that for metallization there is no need for high temperatures as is for vacuum loading since the processes are carried out at room temperature. Because of this also the use of energy is reduced. Systems with hydrogen producing algae will be used for research of biological remediation of waters polluted with metal ions. Obtained knowledge will contribute to better understanding and more efficient removal and recycling of metal ions from wastewaters.
Project is co-financed by Republic of Slovenia and European Union (European Regional Development Fund).

Photocatalysts for water splitting
The water splitting is an uphill reaction with a large positive change in Gibbs free energy (237 kJ/mol). A potentially attractive route to overcome a thermodynamic potential, required for the water splitting, is in use of photo-electrochemical cells with a photo-active catalyst immersed in water. The key for achieving a quantum efficiency of visible light over 10%, which is the limit for a commercial realization of such a system, is in further improvement of existing photocatalysts and/or development of new materials, which will efficiently exploit their unique functional and surface properties to achieve the targeted catalytic activity. Within this research we focuse on
- development of new types of materials and their application in photocatalytic process
- studies of the structural, electronic and photocatalytic charcteristics of new catalysts
- synthesis of nano-powders with controlled morphology
- understanding an influence of morphology, composition, polymorph characteristic
and particle size on photocatalytic activity
- understanding of the photo-catalytic processes on the surface of the catalyst
- development of the microreactor design for hydrogen conversion

Computational solid-state chemistry
Computational chemistry has become a good proactive tool for guiding the scientists' experimental work. Simulations based on density functional theory (DFT) have become an extremely successful tool for describing the ground state properties of a wide range of bulk and more complex form of matter such as nanostructures and interfaces. Our projects include modelling of novel corundum-based photocatalysts, static electric field dependence of the band structure of crystals, simulations of vibrational frequency spectra and new perovskites. Simulations are performed with the ab-initio computational chemistry code Quantum Expresso. We run the simulation project more or less in parallel to our experimental work, which turned out to be an important advantage.

Electrocalorics (... more)
The research on environmental materials currently focuses on solid-state cooling technologies using the electrocaloric effect. We developed a microscopic theory of EC effect for linear dielectrics and are currently developing one for multidomain systems.With this we gained a new insight into the materials, which we want to optimse in order to developed a working solid-state refigerator. We are studying thermal effects in the new type of cooling unit based on quasi-adiabatic principle and constructing a refrigeration system based on such cooling unit. The system will consist of no moving parts or electric compressor and involve no refrigerants. The device will be characterized by a high cooling efficiency, low power consumption and no environmental hazards.

> The French Alternative and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), France
> London South Bank University, UK
> Institute of Fundamental and Frontier Sciences, University of Electronic Science    and Technology of China, Chengdu, China
> Elletra Synchrotron Trieste, Italy
> Istituto Officina dei Materiali (IOM) of CNR, Italy
> Universita' Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy
> Department of Mechanical Engineering, LTH, Lund University, Sweden
> Laboratoire Hubert-Curien, Université Jean Monnet St. Etienne, France
> CEA-DAM-DIF, Laboratoire Composants et Technologies Durcies, France
> Istituto di Struttura della Material, CNR, Italy
> Istituto Nanoscienze, CNR, Italy
> University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy
> University of Toronto, Canada
> Yerevan State University, Armenia
> University of Barcelona, Spain
> University of Padue, Italy
> Università Ca’Foscari Venezia, Italy
> Faculty for Chemistry and Chemical Technology, Univ. of Maribor, Slovenia
> National Chemical Institute Slovenia
> Jozef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia
> Vall-cer d.o.o., Ljubljana, Slovenia
> Seven Refractories d.o.o., Divaca, Slovenia
> Institue CES d.o.o, Slovenia